Boxing clever as well as sharp

Adam Turner -Apr 5, 2012

Apple TV.

THE tiny Apple TV has undergone an iPad-style makeover to coincide with the launch of the new wundertablet.

The Apple TV is a little set-top box designed to bridge the big gap between your television and your Apple gadgets. Its menus now have a similar look and feel to the iPad, although it was overshadowed amid hype around the new iPad and an unfulfilled expectation that we might finally see the fabled Apple Television.

So what does the Apple TV do? It's a tiny media player designed to hook up to your home network via cable or wi-fi and to your television via an HDMI cable. It doesn't actually let you watch digital broadcasts or DVD and Blu-ray movies.

Its primary job is get Apple content on to your television streamed from an iGadget, a computer running iTunes or online from the Apple Store. Among its best features are a slick movie-rental service, the ability to buy TV shows and access to other online services (YouTube, Vimeo and Flickr).

Apple has dropped the price on the new third-generation Apple TV to $109, while packing in extra grunt to handle the demands of 1080p high-definition video. Previously, Apple's high-def movies were limited to 720p. The number refers to how many lines of detail there are in the image - the higher the number, the sharper the picture.

The Apple TV lets you start watching a rented movie once it's downloaded the first few minutes. Even so, you might still be left waiting for hours to start watching a high-def movie. Apple recommends download speeds of at least five megabits per second for 720p movies and has upped this to 8 Mbps for 1080p.

Unfortunately, Apple doesn't make it clear how big its movies are. Standard-def movies weigh in at roughly 1.5 gigabytes, while 720p bumps this to about 4GB. New 1080p movies push this closer to 5GB, which could take a long time to download and seriously dent your allowance.

If you're on cable broadband or the National Broadband Network, you shouldn't need to wait long for a 1080p movie. It's more hit and miss if you're at the mercy of copper phone lines and distance from the telephone exchange. Don't bother with 1080p (or even 720p) movies if you're using slow ADSL1. Even with ADSL2+, you might not get 8Mbps (or even 5Mbps) and thus could be in for a long wait. If in doubt, head over to speedtest.net to test your download speeds.

So is it worth hiring 720p or 1080p movies, if you can spare the bandwidth? Only if your television measures at least 40 inches across (100 centimetres) and you particularly care about picture quality. Even then, if you pay really close attention you'll notice in some scenes that 1080p movies from Apple don't look as good as those on a Blu-ray disc.

Blu-ray movies also sound better than the Apple TV if your home theatre supports the new high-def 7.1 surround-sound formats such as DTS-HD. Apple's 1080p movies come with standard Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound (comparable with a DVD).

So, while the Apple TV might be OK for renting movies, you'll probably want to buy your favourites on disc so they look and sound their absolute best.

The other new trick, available on the second- and third-generation Apple TVs, is the ability to stream your own music and video from Apple's cloud.

If you're using the US iTunes store you can now stream movies which you've previously purchased. This is quite handy, assuming you can spare the bandwidth, as otherwise you need to stream your movies from an iGadget or iTunes on your computer.

Unfortunately streaming previously purchased movies isn't available in the Australian iTunes store yet. Australians can, however, stream their music from Apple via iTunes Match. It's not a subscription music service such as Rdio or Spotify - it only lets you listen to music you already own, from the internet to your iGadgets, iTunes on your computer or the Apple TV.

Again, the advantage is you can enjoy your music without the need to stream it from another device, although you're chewing up broadband allowance.

The real frustration is that iTunes Match doesn't let you stream music from the Apple TV to wireless AirPlay speakers, a feature lost when Apple ripped the hard drive from the original Apple TV that we were hoping to see return with iTunes Match. More on iTunes Match next week.